MAUNA KEA -- How the telescope campus serves the spiritual essence of this sacred place; how OHA and the sovereignty activists try to extort money and destroy Mauna Kea astronomy

The summit of Mauna Kea is the best place on Earth for astronomical telescopes, because it is at a high elevation above most of the Earth’s atmosphere, is far from urban lights, has reasonably easy access and generally good weather. But Mauna Kea is also a sacred place. And Mauna Kea is part of the “ceded lands.” And Mauna Kea is an environmentally sensitive area. Thus OHA demands money for “land rent” and uses religious and environmental claims (some of which may be sincerely held) as ways to extort money and power.

Hawaiian sovereignty activists like to say Mauna Kea is a sacred place with ancient shrines, and therefore it is sacreligious and a desecration to dig into the ground and to put huge telescopes there. But testimony by Ken Conklin shows that the activists’ religious claims are exceedingly superficial from the viewpoint of their own religion. Placing astronomical telescopes on Mauna Kea is actually a fulfillment of the spiritual essence of this sacred place according to the most popular Hawaiian creation legend. The testimony also discredits testimony from the sovereignty activists on environmental issues in view of their motives, and urges that legitimate environmental issues should be identified and dealt with by scientists rather than political activists.

The telescopes on Mauna Kea are built, owned, and operated by various universities, astronomical institutes, and foreign governments. One of the issues "behind the scenes" is that Native Hawaiian activists want them to pay money for the privilege of using the land at Mauna Kea. Telescope sponsors already pay into a fund for maintenance of the road and shared facilities. But telescope sponsors have not been asked to pay lease rent for using the land. Instead, they sign a contract to provide the University of Hawai'i telescope time for UH scholars to use the telescopes to do their research. Telescope time is extremely valuable. UH researchers have used their no-charge telescope time to make major discoveries. However, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs does not receive any ceded land revenue from non-monetary, in-kind payments of telescope time; and Hawaiian institutions other than the University of Hawai'i astronomy institute receive no benefits at all. (except for the benefit we all receive as human beings from exploring the history of the universe!) There have been several proposals from Native Hawaiian groups to stop their environmental and cultural protests in return for monetary payments to be characterized as lease-rent. Commentators can draw their own conclusions regarding whether some of these Native Hawaiian groups are abusing cultural/spiritual claims as vehicles for financial extortion.

Here are links to NASA, the Keck Observatories on Mauna Kea, the University of Hawai’i Institute for Astronomy, Ken Conklin’s testimony, newspaper reports about Mauna Kea astronomical discoveries and political controversy, the ceded lands issue, and the (ab)use of Hawaiian religion to demand race-based political power.